If you like this, you'll love the Conspiracy's
favorite singles of 2003!
K
Somewhere along the line, amid the hype and the backlash, the hipsterism and the
anti-hipsterism (and the inevitable anti-anti-hipsterism), the three month rise, fall
and flame out — as hott-to-played-outt became a two-week cycle, haterism became a
lifestyle and New York supplanted London as the scene that eats itself — we
almost forgot: This is a great fucking album. Perhaps it's way unfashionable now to
declare this, but I loved it. I loved its jagged distortion and throwaway simplicity. I
loved its abandon and menace and tenderness. I loved Karen O and her
doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-dunuh-dunuh-dunuh-dunuhs and the way she curled
sweet-nothings in my ear as her foot lodged itself up my ass. I loved its racket. Was
Fever To Tell the best of the year? Let's put it this way: It was the album of 2003.
So maybe I'm not listening to it in December. And maybe I won't be listening to it in
2004, never mind 2025. But what's that some young fella said about burning out, not
fading away?
#1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell
Somewhere along the line, amid the hype and the backlash, the hipsterism and the
anti-hipsterism (and the inevitable anti-anti-hipsterism), the three month rise, fall
and flame out — as hott-to-played-outt became a two-week cycle, haterism became a
lifestyle and New York supplanted London as the scene that eats itself — we
almost forgot: This is a great fucking album. Perhaps it's way unfashionable now to
declare this, but I loved it. I loved its jagged distortion and throwaway simplicity. I
loved its abandon and menace and tenderness. I loved Karen O and her
doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-dunuh-dunuh-dunuh-dunuhs and the way she curled
sweet-nothings in my ear as her foot lodged itself up my ass. I loved its racket. Was
Fever To Tell the best of the year? Let's put it this way: It was the album of 2003.
So maybe I'm not listening to it in December. And maybe I won't be listening to it in
2004, never mind 2025. But what's that some young fella said about burning out, not
fading away?
Beardy Weirdy
Where the smartie at?
My Little Pony is also tougher than Strawberry Shortcake
Criminal mastermind
But what if Soft Cell were fronted by Damon Albarn?
We've got the 7" to prove it
And they doesn't taste very nice, does they, precious?
Beardy Weirdy Reloaded
Fix yourselves a grilled cheese
Catchy designer gutter punk
Our potential for awesome is deceptive
Actually, I supported Howard Dean
Keeping it real since 2003
Beardy Weirdy Revolutions
Missing: Rough Guide To Chinstrokers Rock
Baby steps
Actually, I bluffed with a low straight
Quick, Beyoncé, reverse the polarity!
While you're at it, can you pick up a box of Pro Stars too?
J
#2. Iron & Wine - The Sea & The Rhythm
A delicate slow-melting southern
snowflake of string-pluckin', soul croonin' whisper magic. If I were a serious
heroin user, this would be the only album released this year that I'd want to come
down to. Shit, I'm an occasional coffee drinker and this was the only thing I wanted
to come down to. If I remembered calculus I'd draw you an exponential growth curve to
demonstrate how much I ended up adoring this EP.
K
#3. Ted Leo/Pharmacists - Hearts Of Oak
The would-be king. If GPC ran completely
by consensus this would be the album of the year — it was nobody's top pick, but
it was the one record that didn't go down like haterade. Ultimately we elected for
passion over unanimity, but Hearts Of Oak remains the year's great unifier: punky
riffs, bashy drums and a voice that said I Mean It Man, all wrapped up in a
five-fat-kids-one-smartie desperation that spelled hunger with a capital bellyache. If
nothing else, this was the joy of rawknroll in 2003. And if you don't love that, then
we can't be friends. Now everybody kiss and make up.
B
#4. The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
People say Chutes Too Narrow was more
raw than Oh, Inverted World, which is like saying Peppermint Patty is
tougher than Strawberry Shortcake - true, but irrelevant. This album wasn't that easy
to pin down. Raw yet shimmery, sad yet uplifting, energizing yet soothing, bitter yet
sweet, this was pop Umami: the indefinable fifth flavor that makes everything else
better. It was the sound of Sunday morning — the sundrenched, slow, sleepy, happy,
swinging-on-a-tire kind from long ago, before zits and Morrissey.
K
#5. King Geedorah - Take Me To Your Leader / Viktor Vaughn - The Vaudeville Villain
Wherein the hardest-working man in hip hop busts his ass twice over and
gives the finger to the quantity/quality equation. Under yet another two
aliases, MF Doom trumped a certain other double-album hip hop opus with
typically bonkers production and underrated rhymes ("Go tell a joke like Joe
Piscopo. Tell them the basics: Basically, break the Matrix and just for
kicks, make them gel like Asics."). Whether or not you buy the mythology —
onetime rap hero is beat down by The Man and returns as a criminal
mastermind in a homemade fright mask — the evidence of evil genius abounds.
Fact is, if they'd been issued a year apart, MF Doom would have been
rewarded with two consecutive top five finishes, but as it is, we'll just
reserve another double-entry for the oh-four.
R
#6. The Dears - No Cities Left
In 2003, Montreal became Canada's epicentre of grandiose pop-noir and The
Dears were right there in the thick of it, swigging champagne and
chain-smoking Gauloises. No Cities Left was an album of epic proportions.
Pushed to the limit in sound and style, part cabaret and part retro-Britpop,
this was what Blur would sound like if Damon Albarn were Marc Almond. Even
if Murray & Co. once came to a GPC Social drunk and disorderly, we still
love them.
J
#7. Hot Hot Heat - Make Up The Breakdown
You spazzes from Victoria in skinny ties can front all you want about "not
trying to be New York revival rockers," but sweet bros, ten minutes ago you
were a raging scream band and I've got the 7" to prove it. But as long as
you keep dishing out novelty-sized grape Ring Pops like Make Up The
Breakdown, I'll hide the Ache self-titled under my bed and click up my heels
to your hot hot party jams.
B
#8. Cat Power - You Are Free
Lost in endless echoing overdubs and a swamp of
reverb, haunted by mournful cello and wistful piano, it's easy to imagine that this
album was recorded in the back of a deep, dark cave. Hidden in the shadows, Chan
Marshall would sing to herself, by turns with sadness and resignation, about the loss
of something precious. By refining the same formula over the years — that rich
and yearning voice plus unobtrusive, atmospheric accompaniment — this tragic,
irresistible Gollum has made each record better than the one before, and this was her
finest to date. For the sake of songs yet to be, we can only hope she never does find
her precious.
B
#9. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Master And Everyone
Little is known about the life
of Bonnie Prince Billy, but much is spoken. It's rumored that he's wrestled ravenous
bears on the barren steppes of Siberia, that he's taken pejote and communed with
animal spirits, that he's hundreds of years old. No one really knows, but the
concentrated heartbreak distilled into every verse bespeaks a soul that's seen more
than it should. Yet under the ashes of sorrow a little spark of warmth still smolders,
elevating pain and loneliness into beautiful, forgiving music.
K
#10. Danger Mouse & Jemini - Ghetto Pop Life
DM & J, welcome to the
pantheon. Don't be shy — grab yourself a spot on the bean bag chair over there
between Mos Def and Tribe. There's some grape soda in the fridge. Fix yourself a
grilled cheese if you're hungry. You should probably say what's up to Deltron and
Pharcyde — they're in the backyard playing some whiffle ball. Roots is
officiating. Try not to trip over Six Feet High & Rising and the J5 EP, OK? And can
you let Black Eyed Peas know that we called they moms and it's time for them to go?
But you make yourself comfortable, because y'all going to be here awhile.
S
#11. Libertines - Up The Bracket
Despite being hung with the unfortunate mantle of Britain's Answer To The
Strokes, The Libertines produced an assured LP of catchy designer gutter
punk. Blessed/cursed with more grit, grime and wasted insouciance than their
US counterparts, they delivered catchy, iconic rock. Of course, with Mick
Jones (wasn't he in some band called the Clash or something?) behind the
controls, there was an added level of proficiency that their young ages
couldn't suggest and all the skag and crime couldn't provide. Still, bonus
points for the rock 'n' roll mayhem lifestyle, boys!
J
#12. Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People
'An indie band made up of every
30+ musician in Toronto with tons of street cred (Dundas St., anyway) but no real
musical success' sounds like a group with about as much potential for awesome as The
Bacon Brothers. But then BSS goes and crafts an album so achingly lovely, so distinct,
so song-to-song unique that their gaggle-of-beautiful losers thing starts to make
sense. How else could people this ugly get their mugs in GQ? After listening to this
disc, I dare you not to fall in love with the first person you see.
J
#13. The Postal Service - Give Up
Even before I heard Give Up, I'd decided I liked it. Ben Gibbard from Death
Cab For Cutie lending his literate pipes to thinking/IDM man Jimmy
Tamborello (aka DNTEL)? There was no way it could have misstepped. And
misstep it didn't, with its soothing indiedisco, mellifluous and über-dancy
all at once. Odes to joy and love and heartbreak and despair, Give Up pulled
a Wesley Clark on us with its all-things-to-everyone populist styles. Who
says you can't make aural art for shakin' that ass?
R
#14. Stars - Heart
Introducing yourselves and your hearts on the first track is about as twee
as you can get, but Stars fortunately don't mess about after that. Don't be
afraid of their obvious adoration for old Smiths records and synth-pop; this
was a gorgeous album — less spectacular than The Dears' No Cities Left,
perhaps, but at the same time more real. In a musical year dominated by
rawk, electro and post-punk, this one slipped beneath most radars. But not
ours. I hearted Heart. Extra kudos for the cool home-made French backdrops
at their shows.
R
#15. Grandaddy - Sumday
Yeah, the redneck trucker look may have gotten tiresome — what if Modesto's
finest scrubbed up, shaved and wore suits or something? — but Grandaddy are
still capable of crushingly good music. Unlike his lyrical subject matter
(technology, broken hearts, El Caminos), Jason Lytle's songwriting talents
show no signs of decay and Sumday, fan grumblings be damned, was the perfect
follow-up to The Sophtware Slump. True, his voice still ain't so good, but
he likes to play fuzzy guitars and noodle with old keyboards, which is A-OK
in our books.
S
#16. Radiohead - Hail To The Thief
For a band that's entered the musical equivalent of their Carlsberg years,
Radiohead hasn't lost any steam. In fact, in Hail To The Thief fans were
rewarded at last with something more musically accessible than Amnesiac or
Kid A (i.e. no Rough Guide To Chinstrokers Rock required). The noodly
leftfield moody electronic bits were wisely reduced a notch while the tried
'n' true guitars received more airtime. Solid nightmarish lullabies, catchy
dirges, spooky graveyard stomps melded with funereal, defiant and
conspiratorial lyrical content — thanks, Thom!
S
#17. The Strokes - Room On Fire
Given the small margin of error for the poster boys of the new rock revival,
Room On Fire was a pleasant couple of baby steps forward. The knack for a
good hook was still there and the sound took in a handful of '80s influences
to go along with the Velvets and Television nuances plied on Is This It. Add
in a glamour girlfriend or two and the weathering of the inevitable backlash
and, heck, cool as ever. Now can I be their friend?
R
#18. Lowfish - 1000 Corrections Per Second
Canada's Suction Records upped the ante on the international electronic music scene
in 2003 — and label co-owner Lowfish led the way with a royal flush in his mitt.
Spanning a broad landscape of minimal techno and electropop, 1000 Corrections Per Second
bared its roots in early 80s synthpop and classic Rephlex/Warp IDM with pride.
Displaying a genuine respect for Vince Clark-era Depeche Mode took guts, but
more importantly this was an electronic album of songs, not tracks. No
kitsch, no retro-chic. It was future-pop and it was very good indeed.
B
#19. White Stripes - Elephant
In a parallel universe where the Lego video had never
been made, and Jack White and Beyoncé never appeared in the same sentence, much
less the same award show, the successor to White Blood Cells would
probably sound exactly the same. It was a more developed album, experimental but
focused, but its referents were all internal. There was no disco punk, no Iggy Pop
collaboration, no white rap, just more white blues, guitar shredding and banshee
wailing. We knew Mr. White sold his soul to the Devil; Elephant sounded like
he just found out he's got two weeks to live.
S
#20. The Sounds - Living In America
Good (Blondie), bad but good (Loverboy, Men at Work and the less cool end of
the '80s electro pool), and just a dash of camp (ABBA? The Cardigans? Sweden
itself?) added up to hooky candy-coated new wave pop. The Sounds answered
the question, What would happen if a band took a time machine back to 1985
and were stuck there only to be saved by a lovable moppet and brought back
to the present day? Now, what happened to that moppet and did he bring back
any Pac-Man cereal?